Confluent Apache Kafka: Cluster Operations and Configuration

• Experience with Linux-based systems and command-line tools
• Familiarity with distributed systems concepts
• Understanding of basic networking and system configuration

Audience

• DevOps and SRE teams managing Kafka deployments
• System administrators working with Confluent and Zookeeper
• Kafka developers and architects responsible for scalable systems

Confluent Apache Kafka is an enterprise-grade distributed event streaming platform built on Apache Kafka. It supports high-throughput, fault-tolerant data pipelines and real-time streaming applications.

This instructor-led, live training (online or onsite) is aimed at intermediate-level engineers and administrators who wish to deploy, configure, and optimize Confluent Kafka clusters in production environments.

By the end of this training, participants will be able to:

• Install, configure, and operate Confluent Kafka clusters with multiple brokers.
• Design high-availability setups using Zookeeper and replication techniques.
• Tune performance, monitor metrics, and apply recovery strategies.
• Secure, scale, and integrate Kafka with enterprise environments.

Format of the Course

• Interactive lecture and discussion.
• Lots of exercises and practice.
• Hands-on implementation in a live-lab environment.

Course Customization Options

• To request a customized training for this course, please contact us to arrange.

Module 1: Introduction to Confluent Apache Kafka Architecture and Cluster Configuration

• What is Apache Kafka and the Confluent Platform?
• Kafka broker, producer, consumer, and topic fundamentals
• The role of Kafka in data streaming and messaging pipelines
• Confluent extensions: REST Proxy, Schema Registry, Control Center
• Kafka cluster architecture: brokers, partitions, and replication

Module 2: Zookeeper Quorum Configuration

• What is Zookeeper?
• Zookeeper’s role in a Kafka cluster
• Zookeeper quorum size
• Zookeeper configuration
• Implementing SSH on our servers
• Hands-on: Zookeeper configuration (as a team and as a service)
• Using the Zookeeper Command Line Interface (CLI)
• Hands-on: Zookeeper quorum setup
• Zookeeper’s internal file system
• Performance factors affecting Zookeeper
• Demo: Zookeeper management tools and Zoonavigator

Module 3: Kafka Cluster Configuration

• Kafka basics
• Kafka configuration
• Hands-on: Kafka configuration on a single broker
• Hands-on: Executing Kafka commands
• Hands-on: Kafka multi-broker (cluster) setup
• Hands-on: Kafka cluster testing
• Can I connect to my Kafka cluster?
• Advertised.listeners configuration: key setting
• Topic configuration
• Setting up message ingestion and delivery in topics
• Hands-on: Demonstrating Kafka resilience
• Kafka performance: I/O, network, RAM, CPU, OS
• Kafka performance: other factors
• Hands-on: How to modify broker configurations

Module 4: Advanced Kafka Configuration

• Landoop Kafka Topics UI, Confluent REST Proxy, Confluent Schema Registry configuration
• Sending and receiving messages (CLI, Java, Spring Framework)
• Metrics and monitoring tools (Confluent Control Center, Elasticsearch, etc.)
• Log files and offset management
• High availability and disaster recovery
• Ensuring high availability with replication
• Performance tuning (producer/consumer)
• Disaster recovery strategies
• Failover control and data recovery
• Connectors setup
• Kafka Connect implementation
• Kafka security features

Summary and Next Steps